Alien Buildings And Combat Tactics

Overgrown fungus buildings... but no fun once inside!

Alien Dimension Buildings

The aliens have ten strange structures which seem to be of an organic design. They are all invunerable to damage.

A building's mission objective can be completed only once since it will self-destruct at successful completion.

The only way to destroy the organic structures is by ground assault with a large and heavily armed X-Com strike team. Attacking the fungus growths with craft weapons does not achieve anything.
Each oversized fungus must be researched to understand its purpose and importance. To start the building assault once landed at a building, select "Investigate Building" or "Raid Building". Both buttons do the same thing.
A brief is prepared outlining the mission objective so that each building can be disabled.
Once an objective has been completed a message: "Building has been disabled" appears. The mission completes if no more hostiles are present. X-Com troops can hunt down the last remaining aliens or escape via available blue-exit-tiles to force an end. There is no rush to escape! The alien building remains structurally sound once it is disabled.
When returning to the alien 'cityscape', the building automatically starts to collapse. Do not launch your craft immediately since they may be damaged from the still self-destructing building. Return to Mega-Primus at your leisure!

The Sequence

One building chamber can only be attacked at any time. Once one growth is destroyed, a new research topic becomes available back in Mega-Primus.
1. Sleeping Chamber
2. Food Chamber
3. Alien Farm
4. Maintenance Factory
5. Incubator Chamber
6. Control Chamber
7. Spawning Chamber
8. Organic Factory
9. Megapod Chamber
10. Dimension Gate Generator
Do not move agents from a landed craft into the building. Keep them within the craft when you start the mission.

Internal Features

Architecture

• Ramps are used by ground units. Strategic removal of some can easily funnel hostiles into an ambush.
• Walls are fibrous and are resistant to damage. Each generic wall cell must be damaged up to three times before collapse is possible. (three different styles from damage: fibrous, stringy, rubble)
• Stone embedded wall cells of any type are weak, needing one shot to destroy it.
• Curved edges (the bull-nose shape) of elevated sections cannot be walked on. They are weak and must be destroyed if wanting to jump off with your agent.
• String-type vertical plants are usually clustered together. They are weak and flammable but can hide a unit.
• Platform sections with intergrated grav-lift can use the lift as structural support if all foundation parts are removed. Collapse may be possible if excessively damaged.

Exotic Plants
Alien plants listed which have a reaction to destruction and are not mission objectives. Other biological growths do not have any battlescape effect. Area-of-effect is typically a radius of two except the large yellow-bright barrel with Stun Gas effect having a radius of nine. Not all are pictured: Acorns (pedestal and overhanging), Rotten Egg, Pink Pods.


Re-Inforcement Pads
These square-shaped devices found within every alien building are used to spawn-in more aliens.
Every alien building will have multiple spawn pads usually clustered with smoke and explosive plants. A common brown rock-type structural overhead scaffold is typical and easily indentified. Destruction of the spawn pad is possible with strong explosives. Each pad will destroy the immediate area with a small (3x3) explosion for each quarter of the complete pad. ie: each individual pad will have four explosions before disappearing.
Green pads only appear in the final building.

Note: The small picture shown in overhead view is the same for both colour types. Some pads may appear mismatched. This is a visual artifact and does not affect the pad's operation.
Blue Exit Tiles
These battlescape tiles are usually invunerable whereas some found within alien buildings may not be. A strong explosive may destroy them.

Alien Re-Inforcements

Aliens present within other structures are able to travel via their 'people tube' network. Any building which comes under attack by an X-Com ground force will prompt the alien horde into sending unlimited assistance to the beseiged building via the re-inforcement pads.
Alien Appearances
Aliens which can spawn-in: Anthropod, Spitter, Skeletoid, Popper.
All other lifeforms will not appear.
Spawn Timer A global timer for the current battlescape. If multiple pad-structures are present (typically three), the game will choose randomly which set to use.

• If a single pad-structure contains multiple pads which are orientated in a square fashion, the spawn-active pad will be the northernmost one (isometric view).
• Alien spawns are timed to appear depending on the building. The longest interval is 40seconds and 10seconds for the shortest.

General Combat Tactics

• Alien corpses, not weapons, may clog the pad if they were killed immediately after appearing (spawn-camping) and will halt further spawns. Avoid killing aliens until they have had a chance to exit the device and move away if 'farming' for equipment.
• If bulk quantities of alien corpses are present, the newest corpse will be removed from the battlescape and will not be recovered whereas weapons and devices will not be removed if too many are present(eg: over 500 items on the ground). The game engine will become unstable. eg: a unit given a destination to move to may not have the destination-icon apear if the game screen includes the map cell with massive quantities of items. This is an indicator that the game is struggling and may crash soon. Complete the mission with your farmed items to prevent loss.
• Once too many corpses are present on the battlescape and automatic corpse reduction has started, the orange pads will not clog up. Agents can then be placed adjacent the pad and shoot-dead any new spawns immediately.

Equipment Farming

also known as Spawn Camping

Raiding an alien building for agent equipment is possible if escape from the battlescape is chosen instead of completing the mission objective. Agents should fill their inventorys with stolen equipment since offloading items is only possible by returning to Mega-Primus.

• A line-up of troop-transports raiding one-after-another method is suitable to maximise booty and to have all agents gain combat experience and attribute increases.
• Spawning aliens are easily ambushed (caution when dying on the pad) since they appear one at a time and in unlimited quantity.
• Using non-explosive weaponry (eg: Toxigun only) will prevent explosions from destroying dropped equipment. Picking up needed armaments and dropping them somewhere high up in a man-made tunnel safe will preserve your loot however, rouge aliens may throw an explosive into your stash if they find it.
• The alien building can be raided endlessly!
  
• Orange pads and the bolbus plant next to it are explosive. If any items are within a two-cell distance of the detonating orange pad, they will all be destroyed and any dropped explosives may affect item piles further via chain-reaction explosions. This will destroy your farmed equipment!

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